3 Answers
3

You'd need another LTO-3 (or 4/5/6) drive yes and you can usually buy them with different connection type, though I'm not aware of there being anything as simple as say a USB or Firewire connected version. Most LTO 3 drives have a parallel SCSI 160 LVD connection so using one of those would require an appropriate SCSI card, I like Adaptecs ones. If you went for an LTO-4 or higher version they make SAS versions, which may be easier to deal with.

Could I use RedHat or Windows 2008 on PC? It would depend on the files
saved in the tapes?

I'd strongly advise using the same OS as the machine it was backed up from.

Would be any device to just plug on PC and lets read the tapes?

Not that I'm aware of, there might be a SCSI 160 LVD to USB/firewire converter but that may be as complex as just buying a SCSI/SAS card.

Ok. The LTO-3 drive that we have is HP 1/8 G2 Tape Autoloader. As you can see here, there are a lot of o/s that can work with that drive. But what if I don't know what o/s was used to backup those tapes? If I choose RedHat and it was backed up with Suse, would be there problems?
–
user316687Sep 10 '12 at 19:05

The OS which you used will not be primarily problem but the software. If you just used tar for the the backup, it will likely even be possible to find a working Windows tool which can read the tapes, but many backup programs use their own archive format and you need a software which can read this format.
–
Sven♦Sep 10 '12 at 20:53

A away to connect that drive (Usually a SCSI card. A free (PCIe) slot in the PC for that card).

The software used to make the backups and the password used to encrypt the backups. (I am not sure if you can use different software if the backups are encrypted. And any sane backup would be encrypted).